If a Scot, while gazing on the battlefield of Flodden sad and melancholy thoughts would arise in your mind, and that mournful but charming song “The Flowers of the Forest” would run through your memory—
“I’ve seen Tweed’s silver stream,
Glittering in the sunny beam,
Grow drumlie and dark as it rolled on its way.
O fickle fortune, why this cruel sporting?
O, why thus perplex us poor sons of a day?
Thy frowns cannot fear me,
Thy smiles cannot cheer me,
For the Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.”
(By the Flowers of the Forest he means the Scottish army at Flodden.)
The village of Norham would calm and delight an invalid, however nervous he might be, and the tree-foliage, the flowery sward, the grand old castle ruin once seen on a summer’s day, or even in the quiet summer’s gloaming, could never be forgotten.
Need I mention Floors Castle, Kelso Abbey, Melrose Abbey, or the abbeys of Jedburgh and romantic Dryburgh? Scott says—
“He who would see Melrose aright
Must see it by the pale moonlight.”
The same may be said about Dryburgh too.
Just a word about Saint Abb’s Head, then I’ll put my horses to, and the Wanderer shall hurry on northwards ho!
Here were the nunnery and chapel of Saint Abb, the ruins of the former still to be seen on the top of precipitous cliffs that stand out into the sea. Go, visit Saint Abb’s on a stormy day, when the wild waves are dashing on the rocks, and the sea-birds screaming around. A feeling of such awe will steal over you as probably you never felt before.
On the 17th of July, about 2:30 pm, the Wanderer rolled out of Berwick, and at four o’clock we crossed the undisputed line which divides Scotland from sister England.
There are two old cottages, one at each side of the road. This is Lamberton.